Things that have made today a good day, 1: Another game was sent to me to review! 2: I’m eating Bacon… The game sent to me this time is “Future Wars” for the PC. I had some issues with Windows Vista being amazing as usual but it’s all good. Considering I have never really played a strategy game, for the purposes of this review I brought over my friend who we shall call “Mr Strategygame”, because he plays them… a lot. The both of us combined should make this fair, now on with the review!

Future Wars is a casual, futuristic, turn based strategy game that costs £12.99 from the “Impulse” game store. You play as “Max” a newbie student in the halls of a military academy who spends a lot of his time being yelled at by a Drill Sergeant guy and a spandex jumpsuit wearing lady by the name of “Howitzer”. There is a story to this game and some of the dialogue is quite funny, it isn’t very memorable but the basic outline of the plot is that Max has to train to fight in the wars of the future… and then fight in the wars of the future! The campaign has 16 levels which doesn’t sound like a huge amount but you will probably replay them a few times because this game can be tricky at times.

The graphics are very nice, they are brightly coloured and fully animated. There is detailed foliage dotted around the maps and crisp shadows on every city featured. The combat animations are very fluid and the explosions are very satisfying to watch.

There’s not much in the way of sounds in this game. There isn’t any voice acting, everything is written but you do get some jaunty music to listen to while you read. I thought the sounds during the combat were quite nice and fit in well with the futuristic theme but apparently some of the noises are recycled or stock sounds according to Mr Strategygame. So it doesn’t score high on the sound aspect of the review by any means.

Ok so the gameplay is quite straightforward, you click on your units and then click in the bright green square closest to where you want to move them and then click ok to confirm your move, press the attack button if you are near an enemy to smite him from existence or press the button to fortify a city if you happen to be placed inside one. There are four kinds of units that we have encountered so far; Light, Heavy, Aerial and a Troop Carrier that has no weapons to speak of and is purely for moving your chaps into those other pesky fellow’s bases. There aren’t any upgrades or anything like that but you can purchase new units of yours somehow get incinerated or…something like that.

According to Mr Strategygame, Future Wars isn’t a very good game because he said it lacks the certain elements that are apparent in all other strategy games like Advanced Wars and Command and Conquer for instance. He says that there’s something there to look at but not much to keep you wanting to play. So that’s the viewpoint of a hardcore strategy gamer, but now for me – the Noob.

I had no problem with this game, I think it’s well made, it looks nice and although it doesn’t have a huge amount of features, that could be a good thing for a beginner in the strategy genre such as I. So what I’m saying is that if you want to try out some of the games that the strategy genre has to offer but you don’t want to get thrown headfirst into one of the hardcore game experiences, why not try Future Wars as a kind of warm up for what’s to come. If you don’t want to buy it for that reason, then just do it to look at Max’s hair – It’s… amazing…